


Tome

by quicksparrows



Series: Side by Side – Chrobin [22]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 15:18:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10281971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: Morgan wonders why his mother carries around a tome but never uses it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt from Tori!

.

 

Morgan thinks he's sneaky, but he isn't, not by half. Ada watches his fingers creep around the tabletop, inching closer and closer to the tome by her elbow, but he keeps looking up at her to check if she's watching. She pretends she isn't, and he still he keep trying. He's not always astute, and that, above all, is his downfall.

His fingers finally brush the spine of her tome and he yelps when she raps him over the knuckles with her own. Not hard –– just enough to sting –– but the effect is the same. He withdraws his hand and rubs his knuckles and has the gall to look sheepish. She sweeps the book across the table, to her other side.

"Too slow, little one," she says.

Morgan laughs, shrinking back with flushed cheeks.

"I wasn't _doing_ anything," he says.

"Uh huh," she says, and she turns her eyes back to her writing. "Leave my book alone."

"Can't I just look?" he asks.

"Not if you're going to be a sneak about it," she says. She's leant on one elbow, chin in her hand, still appraising her writing. There's at least four more extended notes to make on the benefits of training Pegasus to fly into the dark, and Frederick has been on her for a week. She adds, absently: "You should have just asked if you want to see."

"I didn't think you'd say yes," he says.

She smiles into her palm.

"Well, if you have to sneak, you're not mature enough for it."

Morgan's face falls a bit, but he scoots down the bench towards her, draws himself up a little taller in his seat, and plucks up his resolve.

"Can you at least tell me what it is? You always take it with you but you never use it."

"Hmm," Ada hums, and she glances at the tome. Its rich blue cover is accented by gold filigree making up a winged snake body. "It's the Book of Naga. Your father and I recovered it a few months ago; I've been keeping it on me for safekeeping."

"The Book of Naga?" Morgan repeats. He appraises the spine from a distance. "What kind of magic is it?"

"Light," Ada replies. "Holy magic."

Morgan pauses, and then asks, thoughtfully:

" _Can_ you use it?"

He's clever, and perceptive when he has enough time to think about it –– not too dissimilar from a certain someone else, she's noted. His cleverness makes the question sting a little less. She's far from holy, and that's the truth, anyway. No sense in being bothered by it, after all.

"No," she says. Ada opens the cover; the first page is covered in arcane writing, well beyond her comprehension. "It's like the Falchion. You have to be of a certain bloodline."

"Huh," Morgan murmurs. "Could I use it?"

"Were you going to nab it to try?"

Morgan considers that trap. Ada laughs and puts an arm around his shoulders. She topples him against her easily, and despite his initial sigh he's just as quick to snuggle up to her side with a long groan of _moooooother_.

"I was just curious!" he protests.

"And curiosity is going to get you in trouble if you don't mind what you're doing!" Ada says, when he settles under her arms. She scoots the book back towards him. "Maybe you can use it someday. For now, you just look."

Morgan takes it between his hands, careful of its brittleness, fingertips ginger on its ancient pages. He looks upon it with a careful respect as Ada looks on.

"Mother?"

"Yes, baby?"

She presses a brief kiss to the crown of his head.

"Did you and Father track it down to defeat Grima?"

She hums and doesn't reply for a second, instead forking her fingers through his hair, parting it funny. He cozies up, sank right into the soft spot of her side, and new as it is to have him as her child, it feels right.

"It was a thought," she says. "We knew your father's old family legend, so we did a little tomb raiding in hopes it would work out. It's been used to end wars before, so maybe it could again. Or that was the idea, anyway."

Morgan sets the tome down and looks up at her, eyes round.

"You can't use it, and Father is... well."

"Hopeless with magic?" Ada suggests. Morgan cracks a smile. "Definitely. He'd be lucky to even manage a beginner's fire spell."

"I could do that in my sleep," Morgan announces.

"You could," she says. "But anyway, that was the idea. We put it to bed once we realized it did take a specific bloodline."

"What about me?"

Ada brushes Morgan's bangs back again.

"It's not for you to worry about. Maybe when you're a great tactician. Until then, no pressure of the sort."

"But what about saving you?"

Ada pauses, fingertips still poised on the crown of her son's head. He looks up with her, eyes flooded deep with concern, and she bends to kiss him on each cheek. There's still that roundness to his face, a babyishness. An innocence.

"Magic isn't going to save me," she tells him, sensibly. "All we need is a good plan, and fortunately for us, I'm the best there is for that."

He nods, very curtly.

"No worries, hmm?" she prompts. "Your father and I want you and Lucina to have whatever childhoods you can, when this is over. I want it to be a world of our making for you. You can have your own adventures when you're older."

Morgan nods again, and says nothing. Instead he shifts down even more, to lay across the bench with his head on her lap. Ada just pets his hair a little more, until he falls asleep.


End file.
